I am aware, yeah it’s rather a long title. Honestly, don’t know how to shorten it.
People who know me, knew that i am not particularly fan of Apple’s products. But let’s give the credit; these devices are stable, own hardwares optimized for its own OS’ and vice-versa. Even though Apple uses Windows to develop MacOS, it’s still as enclosed environment as possible. So as SAP consultants, we are in desperate help of SAP GUI. SAP can propose a Java based GUI solution, but we all know, it’s a little bit ‘meh’.
Our solution is simple. Virtual Machine. I know, VM’s can be bulky, slow, fan exhausting. The one we are going to use is not that much. At least, after it’s been setup properly.
What we need is Parallel’s Desktop. This VM solution inherits a solution that no other VM can make. Coherence view. That’s the one making the difference. What it does is, just provides you with the Windows 10 window in your MacOS.
The setup that i am going to explain just for SAP GUI clean usage. It may not perform well on other applications (however, which caused no-problem for me).
So let’s say that we’ve installed Windows 10 to our Parallels. It has booted up. It will most likely heat-up and slow down your VM. It’s normal. Since Apple uses thermal throttling, fan effect get into the equation pretty late. It’s cause is Windows 10’s search for and download/install updates. In the meanwhile you can download and install SAP GUI and its updates no problem.
Slow Connection
When you boot-up the GUI and add some server links to use, you’ll observe that connection will take a century. So we need to correct the network setup. In the Configure, choose Network, then check “Network Conditioner” and in Profile drop-down, select “Custom”. In the button menu of “Configure”, choose bandwidth to unlimited for both, and 0 for all parameters. Apply, boot-up your machine and you are good to go.
This is the first solution to provide a faster connection within VM. After this, connection related everything must be blazing fast.
Blurry Fonts?
Actually, this topic is also a pain in the head for Windows 10 too. Wrong DPI approach can make some applications blurry even in Windows based PCs.
Since brand-new MBPs incorporates a glorious retina display (seriously, good-job Apple) it’d be shame if we don’t use it properly. To be honest, it’s also very difficult to use GUI in default setting. If you use the setting “Best for Retina display”, resolution gets corrected as it is in MacOS.
The Amazing “Coherence View”
This is the best part. When we kick-up the VM in Windows 10, we get a whole distinguished desktop for it. If you move the cursor up and see the taskbar you’ll see a light blue button. It starts the Coherence View.
It just imports the Windows 10 window into the MacOS and you can use the window as appropriate as you can. In our case, it’s SAP GUI.
Since we’ve got our beloved GUI properly organized on MacOS, on the next post, i’ll mention some cool productivity tools for MacOS.
Thanks.
Levent